Here is an amazing Sonic Frontier! Steven Drozd from The Flaming Lips talks on the new album "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots"

		●What can we expect from the new album " Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots "? I'm excited about it! It seems like new sound. Something new for us. I don't want to say more sophisticated than The Soft Bulletin. It seems...I don't know (laughs). It sounds new. I guess The Soft Bulletin came out first it sounded new to me. Now I hear the sound it's not bad, but it seemed like the past. But this is real new music to me. ●You wanted to try something new for the new album. Yeah. New sound, new way is to try writing songs. So we've tried hard to do that. I think it sounds new. I think people like The Flaming Lips more like it anywhere. Hopefully more people may be they didn't hear us before they like it. ●You said you were into Electronic music. Well, it happened for a while. But I used to be like, hear the sort of stuff, I go "Let's me cool to do that" but we didn't do. Now it's like " Wow! That sound is so cool! We should try something like that!" and then we just tried. But you know we've listened to Electronic stuff for a long time even before we were making The Soft Bulletin. Always seems this kind of music you would listen to but wouldn't actually try to do yourself. Obvious thing is we always try to make some bunch of different things. So I think this new album even more so mixing everything, try to make something new for us. I guess people will be surprised at the new album like " Wow! This is The Flaming Lips?" if they really like "The Soft Bulletin". I mean it's in a good way! I think "The Soft Bulletin" came out in 199.. ●1999. 1999. Now 2002. Three years later so... ●Yeah, maybe people have changed. Yeah. We tried to change every album anyway. ●Which songs did you make melodies this time? This time it's more we were writing songs together. ●You and Wayne? Wayne And I get together and Wayne says something "Wow! That really cool! Drum beat drum machine. Check it out! What do you think of that?" I say "Yeah, why don't we try this cords?" And Wayne says "Wow that's cool!" You know I was doing kind of melody. He writes lyrics. Some of songs he plays guitars or something. I say, "Add this part too." We wrote a lot more together. I guess we always do anyway. But some of the songs I have music and he describes the words like One More Robot song, ballad kind of song I have. He writes lyrics and Dave's idea to put weird drum beat on that. So it's a big combination. Mostly when I sit down and figure out writing, make up to songs and then we start recording, everybody flows their ideas. It's not much different from the last record. I still don't even try to write lyrics. I have melody thing, just sort of singing (Steven hamming...) and Wayne has ideas for the lyrics. ●How about the image of the new album? You said it's sort of 70's ballad. That was just One More Robot. ●Oh, I see. That song was tried to be like 70's ballad. You put beat on it. The song about robot doesn't seem like 70's (laughs).  I always try to write ballad that's kind of melody. You really wanna try to write pop song, really good catchy, and put weird sound. It's more put so much orchestra stuff. It's more like strange keyboard stuff like that. ●Which song is your favorite? I like One More Robot, Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part 1, It's Summertime. I like all of them really. But probably my favorite is One More Robot and Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell. ●Why did you decide to sing "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part 1" in Japanese? I think we sort of try to..., we thought Japanese language version that people might be interested in and Japan we really like it and maybe they play it on radio shows. Probably not, but maybe...(laughs) ●Whose idea? I can't remember... ●No! You can't remember? (laughs) (Laughs) I think it might be Dave's idea... I think maybe... because he had Number Girl in studio and maybe he had this idea. "I want you guys to sing Japanese language because it's about Yoshimi, and  this is a Japanese person. If you guys sing along in Japanese it's more fun!" or something. ●Singing in Japanese sounds strange, doesn't it? Yeah. But I did do that harmony part. Wayne had concentrate on very difficult...that was actually kind of respond to do that.
		Spring 2002
			Exclusive article by Steven Drozd
			■Exclusive Steven Drozd Interview

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